This document summarizes a post-implementation review of a business process improvement project conducted through a questionnaire. The questionnaire covered various aspects of the project including scope, business drivers, value, measures, governance, approach, implementation, risk, results, and use of ERP systems. The review aimed to understand how well goals were achieved and lessons learned from the project.

1. Lesson Learned Report
Post Implementation Review -
Questionnaire
Anand Subramaniam

2. “Norms are things that are always
perceived, but never achieved.”
- Phillip A. Trella
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3. Highlights
 Scope  Approach
 Business Case  Implementation
Drivers  Risk
 Value  Result
 Measures  ERP
 Governance /
Stewardship
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4. Scope
 Please describe the business functions and organisations involved
in this project?
 What was the planned duration of the project?
 What was the actual duration?
 What was your organisation's role and level of involvement?
 What is the original project cost (in dollars)?
 What was the total cost at completion?
 Which core business processes were targeted for improvement?
 Were external resources (consultants) used? If yes, please specify
their role?
 Did you leverage your existing technology or did you procure a new
system?
 Was the project team a cross functional team?
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5. Business Case Drivers
 What were the internal business drivers (eg. cost
reduction, performance improvement)?
 What were the external business drivers (eg. regulatory
reasons, market pressure) for change?
 What were the desired outcomes/goals)?
 What were the financial and non-financial goals?
 Was a business case (financial and non-financial)
developed?
 What was your ROI and Pay-back time according to the
business case?
 Were there rapid improvement opportunities that would
have shortened the payback period?
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6. Value
 How did you distinguish "must-have"
features of COTS (Commercial, off-the-
shelf) from the "nice-to-have"?
 Which improvements had greatest
impact?
 Did vendors influence your project
spending decisions?
 What were the top three cost drivers?
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7. Measures
 Did the project have intermediate goals / evaluation
points at which decisions could be made to stop further
effort?
 How were metrics used in your decision making
process?
 Were performance metrics tied to the user
requirements? If yes, how did you measure your
progress?
 What were the Critical Success Factors?
 How was performance reported to the leadership team /
sponsors?
 Was Balanced Score card used for reporting?
 What were the key measures of performance?
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8. Governance / Stewardship
 Were customers/stakeholders involved in developing the
new processes?
 Who was (were) the sponsor (s)? Please state their
position (s).
 Were executive sponsors involved (CEO,CFO, COO)?
How?
 Were key executives committed to the project from the
beginning?
 Were user forums established to support continuous
user awareness during transition?
 Was a steering committee established? If yes, please
explain their role?
 Were corporate process owners identified? If yes, did
they have the proper authority?
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9. Governance / Stewardship (Contd.)
 Did organisational policies and regulations
require updating as a result of new processes?
 Was the project led by technical, functional, or
management staff?
 Did you use an industry standard Project
Management methodologies (EVM,PMBOK,
Prince 2, others)?
 Are you Project Managers certified?
 Does your organisation follow any of the industry
standard process improvement techniques (Six
Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, TQM)?
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10. Approach (Benchmarking)
 Was the initiative based on an organisation strategic plan
or a reactive plan based on lack of systems / operations
functionalities?
 Were in-house solutions considered? If yes, what was
the outcome?
 Were alternative solutions considered?
 How were user requirements collected to support
building the implementation plan?
 Did you use industry benchmarks?
 Was a benchmark initiative conducted based on best
business practices?
 What were the most significant assumptions going into
the project?
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11. Approach (Enterprise Architecture)
 Did you have a documented Enterprise
Architecture (EA)?
 Was existing infrastructure used to
support change project?
 What method or framework was used to
develop your EA?
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12. Approach (Reference Models)
 Were scenarios or reference models
developed to facilitate selecting the vendor
or modules?
 Were the scenarios designed, tested and
evaluated prior to implementing the
solution?
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13. Approach (Change Management)
 Was radical change necessary?, If yes, in what areas
(People, Process Technology)?
 Were alternatives / work around considered?
 Were key component of change management defined
prior to project kick-off? If yes, at what level was change
management introduced into the project?
 Were there employee impact assessment done prior to
initiation of the project? How were they handled?
 How much of total project cost was spent on change
management? (training, communications, etc)
 What change management tools and techniques did you
use?
 Was the soft cost for change management planned into
the budget?
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14. Implementation
 Were all planned process changes fully implemented?
 Were new processes disruptive to business operations?
 How did you reduce the impact of process change?
 Was an issue resolution process defined and used?
 What were the key processes that helped or hindered
the implementation?
 Was a Center of Excellence (CoE) or competency center
established? (Knowledge Repository?)
 Was there a pilot?
 Was the pilot successful?
 Was any new technology or software used?
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15. Risk
 Was risk sufficiently evaluated before
undertaking the change project?
 What were some of the known risks?
 Was a risk mitigation strategy developed?
 What elements of the mitigation strategy were
implemented?
 What were some of the unanticipated risks?
 How were unanticipated risks handled?
 Was consideration given to a modular approach
to reduce risk?
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16. Result
 Were desired improvements achieved?
 Was sufficient value created by new processes
to justify the effort and cost?
 What were some (examples) of the tangible
financial impacts of your change efforts?
 Could similar benefits have been achieved for
less cost?
 What additional challenges were encountered?
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17. ERP
 What was the rationale for selecting ERP versus other COTS
solutions?
 What processes were targeted for improvement by ERP?
 Was the desired process designed prior to implementation efforts?
 Was process modeling used?
 How many existing systems did the ERP replace?
 Was a systems integrator (SI) used?
 Were scenarios developed to facilitate selecting the vendor or
modules?
 How much of the COTS solution was used “out of the box”?
 What was the implementation plan? (Big bang, phased?)
 How many vendors were used? What type?
 Was unexpected customisation required?
 How many modifications were required?
 How much did customisation cost?
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18. ERP (Contd.)
 Who could authorise customisations?
 How were legacy systems retired?
 Who could authorise customisations?
 Was the ERP software solution chosen by the SI or by the sponsor?
 Were multiple COTS solutions used during this change project?
 Were any non-essential features included in COTS product?
 What ERP implementation methodology was used? (software
vendor, yours, industry standard Project Management
methodologies, systems integrator?)
 What was your strategy for testing the ERP implementation?
 Were reference models used during blueprinting? (As~Is and
To~Be)
 How would you rate the COTS product(s) for quality, performance,
ease of use, functionality, etc.?
 Did systems integrator perform to your expectations?
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19. “When you get right down to it, one of the
most important tasks of a leader is to
eliminate his people's excuse for failure.”
- Robert Townsend
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20. Good Luck
http://www.linkedin.com/in/anandsubramaniam
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